Wow, am I a little behind in blogging about Reagan's school work. We now have a couple of daily class activities. We do the weather; talking about what today's weather is, and guessing what tomorrow's weather might be. We also have been doing a daily journal; Reagan has a notebook that she draws pictures in... whatever she chooses to write or draw. :-)
Over the past couple of days we've been doing some school work, but haven't really had anything too planned ahead. One day we learned about the post office, reading Sesame Street Post Office, and then she made pictures to send to her grandparents. She really enjoyed making the pictures, helping put them in the envelopes, and putting the stamps on!
After going to the library, we had some fun new books to read as well, and were finally able to read Goldilocks as we had planned to do a couple days prior. Reagan really likes that story, and there's a recipe for Mama Bear's porridge cookies on the back of the book that she's really excited to make.
Yesterday we read a book about penguins and then another book that asks you to mimic animal behaviors including walking like a penguin. This is one of Reagan's favorite things to do after seeing Chris and Martin do it on Zoboomafoo.
Both kids have een sick, so it's kind of put a damper on things, but we did get out to the store yesterday to get fish for our classroom aquarium. Reagan is really excited about them. We have one tank with Blue and a ivory mystery snail. In the other we have Mickey Mouse, Molly, and a black mystery snail. We also picked up some new schooling materials about which we are very excited. Make sure to check in for new updates!
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Cider Ciders
We've been a little behind on our schooling the end of this week since we've had so much to do! We finished up our colors on Thursday with 2 worksheets and 2 collages. Then Friday we took a trip to the library and learned about that. Reagan was able to relate an episode of Calliou and a Sesame Street book to the experience and talked about it a lot. We completely missed schooling yesterday just because the timing didn't work out, but Reagan kept asking to do school work.
Today we learned about fire fighters (Reagan says it cider ciders), and basic emergency information. It is the beginning of doing some learning about different jobs. We watched an episode of Fireman Sam this morning before breakfast. Then we we started school time I asked Reagan some general questions about Fireman Sam and fire fighters and we wrote down what she had to say. We wore fire hats, played with mini fie fighter figures, and read a book about calling 911, and The Sesame Street Firehouse. We also talked about what to do if there's a fire in our house, and did a fire drill. We're going to need more work on this, but it was a good start. Hopefully I'll get a chance to print out a couple of coloring pages from the Fireman Sam website. There are some other fun activities on there that I think would e good for when she is older. Plus possibly doing a dress the firefighter thing where you glue the clothes and gear on.
We also finally got some orange construction paper. Who knew it would be so hard to find!?! With it complete, and after finally picking up some more push pins, we were able to complete our rainbow of collages on the wall! Reagan's really excited to see her work up on the wall, and loves reviewing the colors this way. (They're across the top.)
Today we learned about fire fighters (Reagan says it cider ciders), and basic emergency information. It is the beginning of doing some learning about different jobs. We watched an episode of Fireman Sam this morning before breakfast. Then we we started school time I asked Reagan some general questions about Fireman Sam and fire fighters and we wrote down what she had to say. We wore fire hats, played with mini fie fighter figures, and read a book about calling 911, and The Sesame Street Firehouse. We also talked about what to do if there's a fire in our house, and did a fire drill. We're going to need more work on this, but it was a good start. Hopefully I'll get a chance to print out a couple of coloring pages from the Fireman Sam website. There are some other fun activities on there that I think would e good for when she is older. Plus possibly doing a dress the firefighter thing where you glue the clothes and gear on.
We also finally got some orange construction paper. Who knew it would be so hard to find!?! With it complete, and after finally picking up some more push pins, we were able to complete our rainbow of collages on the wall! Reagan's really excited to see her work up on the wall, and loves reviewing the colors this way. (They're across the top.)
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Orange, Green and Purple
Today was another color day. The plan is to get through those first, and then move on to some other things. :-) Today we covered orange, green, and purple. Of course when I was prepping last night I found that in the 5 or 6 different packs of colored paper I have (some of which are rand new) I had not 1 sheet of orange construction paper!!! I had had one, but cut part of it for a collage last week... thinking that of course the other newer packs would have orange. Reagan did well doing the collages anyway, though, and we saved the orange pictures to glue on an orange paper later when we find one!
Along with the collages we did three worksheets, read a book about colors, practiced writing "O" for orange, and did mini 2-piece puzzles to practice matching color splotches to the correct names. Reagan did all of the puzzle by herself, only needing help with new colors like tan and maroon.
The really exciting thing today was our snack. We made painted toast. I got the idea from an online home school for preschool group that I've joined. I of course hadn't written the exact directions down, and when you're 2 year old is ready to go, it's not the best time to say wait, mommy needs to look this up on the internet. So... based on what I remembered we made it this way;
Rainbow Painted Bread
What you need:
several slices of bread (white bread works best- all we had that was white was hamburger buns!)
food coloring
milk
small bowls
cutting board
baking pan
pastry brush
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Put the cutting board down as the child's work surface. Put two drops of food coloring in each of your small bowls for however many colors you want. (Make colors you don't have- like purple- by putting one drop of each color that goes into the color you want. We made orange, green and purple.) Add a small amount of milk- 1/4 cup or less- to each bowl and mix until evenly colored. Make sure you have one bowl set aside with some water in it for rinsing the brush between colors. Allow the child to use pastry brush to paint their bread to their liking! Place masterpieces onto baking pan and toast in the oven for about 15 minutes. LEt cool to eating temperature and enjoy!
Pictures from our snack making!
The painting begins!
The masterpieces about to go into the oven!
Yummy! Enjoying our color themed bread with oranges and milk for snack.
Along with the collages we did three worksheets, read a book about colors, practiced writing "O" for orange, and did mini 2-piece puzzles to practice matching color splotches to the correct names. Reagan did all of the puzzle by herself, only needing help with new colors like tan and maroon.
The really exciting thing today was our snack. We made painted toast. I got the idea from an online home school for preschool group that I've joined. I of course hadn't written the exact directions down, and when you're 2 year old is ready to go, it's not the best time to say wait, mommy needs to look this up on the internet. So... based on what I remembered we made it this way;
Rainbow Painted Bread
What you need:
several slices of bread (white bread works best- all we had that was white was hamburger buns!)
food coloring
milk
small bowls
cutting board
baking pan
pastry brush
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Put the cutting board down as the child's work surface. Put two drops of food coloring in each of your small bowls for however many colors you want. (Make colors you don't have- like purple- by putting one drop of each color that goes into the color you want. We made orange, green and purple.) Add a small amount of milk- 1/4 cup or less- to each bowl and mix until evenly colored. Make sure you have one bowl set aside with some water in it for rinsing the brush between colors. Allow the child to use pastry brush to paint their bread to their liking! Place masterpieces onto baking pan and toast in the oven for about 15 minutes. LEt cool to eating temperature and enjoy!
Pictures from our snack making!
The painting begins!
The masterpieces about to go into the oven!
Yummy! Enjoying our color themed bread with oranges and milk for snack.
It's Rainy Today
I hadn't been planning to be schooling 7 days a week. In fact I think that's a little much at this age, but Reagan insists. Yesterday daddy was home and Reagan had her gymnastics class in the morning. But when daddy left for a dentist appointment in the afternoon, and Adam went to take a nap, she insisted we do school work! Of course, since I was planning a day off, I hadn't done any of the lesson plans for this week yet! But I managed to throw something together, and we had a good time.
Reagan was excited that it was raining, and has been very interested in the rain, hail, etc that we have gotten recently, so we did some studies on weather. First we talked about weather and started our (now) daily weather predictions on the pocket chart.
We did a home-made worksheet on identifying what things are weather, or have to do with weather (cloud, sun, rain etc.) And did a collage (one of Reagan's favorite things to do) where she glued rain drops under one cloud and snow flakes under another, using verbal numeric directions. She did so well with that! I think it was a good way to help work on listening skills further, as well as focusing on the weather, and of course the counting and number recognition math aspects. (I know this one really isn't a collage, but that's what Reagan calls any paper gluing craft at the moment. :-P)
Then Reagan drew a picture of some weather and told me about it. :-) Reagan wanted to do more of course, so we worked with an alphabet set that's on the wall, practicing singing the song, remembering which letter came next, and then matching words that began with the letters to the letters. She did a great job with this, and did very well matching the puzzle pieces for the letter with the pictures. I think it was extremely successful for having been completely impromptu.
This was our first day where Adam was awake for any of our school time. In fact he didn't nap very long and was with us most of the time. We had some challenges because he wanted to participate in the coloring and worksheets, but he did have some nice time reading his books too. It was quite a challenge to keep him otherwise occupies, and I hope he continues with such a god nap schedule so for a while so that we can get as much school work done as Reagan is wanting.
lol
Reagan was excited that it was raining, and has been very interested in the rain, hail, etc that we have gotten recently, so we did some studies on weather. First we talked about weather and started our (now) daily weather predictions on the pocket chart.
We did a home-made worksheet on identifying what things are weather, or have to do with weather (cloud, sun, rain etc.) And did a collage (one of Reagan's favorite things to do) where she glued rain drops under one cloud and snow flakes under another, using verbal numeric directions. She did so well with that! I think it was a good way to help work on listening skills further, as well as focusing on the weather, and of course the counting and number recognition math aspects. (I know this one really isn't a collage, but that's what Reagan calls any paper gluing craft at the moment. :-P)
Then Reagan drew a picture of some weather and told me about it. :-) Reagan wanted to do more of course, so we worked with an alphabet set that's on the wall, practicing singing the song, remembering which letter came next, and then matching words that began with the letters to the letters. She did a great job with this, and did very well matching the puzzle pieces for the letter with the pictures. I think it was extremely successful for having been completely impromptu.
This was our first day where Adam was awake for any of our school time. In fact he didn't nap very long and was with us most of the time. We had some challenges because he wanted to participate in the coloring and worksheets, but he did have some nice time reading his books too. It was quite a challenge to keep him otherwise occupies, and I hope he continues with such a god nap schedule so for a while so that we can get as much school work done as Reagan is wanting.
lol
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Red, Yellow, Blue
I had a lot of things planned for today, and really thought that it might be too much. But with Reagan's recent enthusiasm we ended up doing everything planned and more! Today was the colors red, yellow and blue. We did 4 worksheets, 3 collages, 2 sets of car matching games, read a book, did a scavenger hunt, and had a color themed snack. Those were the planned activities. Then we also did Play Doh, and were going to do some coloring, but Reagan said her tummy hurt again, so we watched an episode of Super Why instead.
I won't bore you with uploads of the worksheets. One was matching colors, and then there was one each for our focus colors today. Reagan did really well with them and is getting increasingly better with circling objects, and drawing lines between them.
Here are some pictures of our collages The idea is to make them for every color we do, and out them up on the wall in the classroom, so that eventually we have an entire rainbow set.
After the collages, we did the worksheets, and then used some Sesame Street flash cards to play a couple of games. It's a set that covers, shapes, colors and opposites. We used the color/shape cards and practiced sorting them by matching the colors, and then y matching the shapes. Preliminary shapes went really well, but the pentagon, hexagon, and octagon got confusing. Reagan is only used to pentagons, so having so many different multi sided shapes was a challenge. Then we did a scavenger hunt, looking around the classroom for things that were red, yellow, or blue. When we were done we sorted all the items by color.
Reagan asked to do some Play Doh, so we chose a color that was one of the ones we were learning about, and she got to pick out Play Doh cookie cutters that were those colors too. For snack we were going to do a bread painting project, but I didn't plan well enough and couldn't find the food coloring. So instead we had yellow bananas, red strawberries, and blueberries. While I went to get snack ready Reagan cleaned up and put away her Play Doh all by her self without even being asked! Every day she's gotten so much better and has shown at least one new, or improved skill. We're all quite enthusiastic to continue! And of course when Adam got up form his nap, he wanted to get in on the color learning action too!
I won't bore you with uploads of the worksheets. One was matching colors, and then there was one each for our focus colors today. Reagan did really well with them and is getting increasingly better with circling objects, and drawing lines between them.
Here are some pictures of our collages The idea is to make them for every color we do, and out them up on the wall in the classroom, so that eventually we have an entire rainbow set.
After the collages, we did the worksheets, and then used some Sesame Street flash cards to play a couple of games. It's a set that covers, shapes, colors and opposites. We used the color/shape cards and practiced sorting them by matching the colors, and then y matching the shapes. Preliminary shapes went really well, but the pentagon, hexagon, and octagon got confusing. Reagan is only used to pentagons, so having so many different multi sided shapes was a challenge. Then we did a scavenger hunt, looking around the classroom for things that were red, yellow, or blue. When we were done we sorted all the items by color.
Reagan asked to do some Play Doh, so we chose a color that was one of the ones we were learning about, and she got to pick out Play Doh cookie cutters that were those colors too. For snack we were going to do a bread painting project, but I didn't plan well enough and couldn't find the food coloring. So instead we had yellow bananas, red strawberries, and blueberries. While I went to get snack ready Reagan cleaned up and put away her Play Doh all by her self without even being asked! Every day she's gotten so much better and has shown at least one new, or improved skill. We're all quite enthusiastic to continue! And of course when Adam got up form his nap, he wanted to get in on the color learning action too!
Saturday, July 19, 2008
One Day Off, And One Day On Deedle Deedle Dumpling
We took a day off yesterday because Reagan wasn't feeling well. Instead of schooling we took a bath. Hooray for getting clean!
So today we did the work we had been planning to do yesterday, and then some! I asked her if she wanted to do school work, and she was quite excited to have our time in the class room. She completed every activity and worksheet I had planned, and then asked to do more school work! We were doing matching organizing and separating. Matching upper and lower case letters, separating them, separating big and small etc. I actually wasn't prepared for the hands on sorting activity I had planned so we did skip that one. But instead, we went though her Sesame Street alphabet cards and she told me what letter each of the words started with. She still wanted more, so we read two books, worked on learning our address (she knows it reasonably well but keeps forgetting the first number of our house number,) drew a picture (circle and a letter R- she chose what to draw, and did it all by herself!,) and played Play Doh. She is also getting very good at putting away her things in her pencil box. She knows what goes in there, and what things we need for which activities. She also really good about getting it out only during school time, and putting it away right where it goes! She wanted to do more school work then even, but I needed to make a run to the grocery store before a party this afternoon. I convinced her to come saying we would get a special treat at the store... and we did... a new book Little People School Bus Lift-A-Flap. She was so excited about it she was trying to read it while we walking around the store and kept bumping into things.
Right now I only have one day ahead of lesson plan left, so I may need to go work on writing up more tonight! It makes me so happy and proud to see how much she is learning and how much she is loving "school."
So today we did the work we had been planning to do yesterday, and then some! I asked her if she wanted to do school work, and she was quite excited to have our time in the class room. She completed every activity and worksheet I had planned, and then asked to do more school work! We were doing matching organizing and separating. Matching upper and lower case letters, separating them, separating big and small etc. I actually wasn't prepared for the hands on sorting activity I had planned so we did skip that one. But instead, we went though her Sesame Street alphabet cards and she told me what letter each of the words started with. She still wanted more, so we read two books, worked on learning our address (she knows it reasonably well but keeps forgetting the first number of our house number,) drew a picture (circle and a letter R- she chose what to draw, and did it all by herself!,) and played Play Doh. She is also getting very good at putting away her things in her pencil box. She knows what goes in there, and what things we need for which activities. She also really good about getting it out only during school time, and putting it away right where it goes! She wanted to do more school work then even, but I needed to make a run to the grocery store before a party this afternoon. I convinced her to come saying we would get a special treat at the store... and we did... a new book Little People School Bus Lift-A-Flap. She was so excited about it she was trying to read it while we walking around the store and kept bumping into things.
Right now I only have one day ahead of lesson plan left, so I may need to go work on writing up more tonight! It makes me so happy and proud to see how much she is learning and how much she is loving "school."
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Letters O and W
Today we did the letters O and W. Two letters that Reagan has had some success with writing on her own before. (Some samples of ones she did all by herself today!)
We did a wipe of book page, a regular workbook page, practice writing paper for the two letters, as well as an O and W word chart. We also did an activity where we went through her basket of shoes and matched them into pairs to practice the number 2. This of course turned into a practice putting on shoes session. :D
The worksheet. Reagan did an excellent job connecting the things with lines. She's been able to draw a somewhat straight line for awhile now, but has never had the control to do this sort of thing. Her abilities to apply these skills now that she's been asked to are just amazing. Not only is she connecting with lines like this, she can also circle objects reasonably well!
For the chart she wrote each of the letters up top, next to ones that I had written, and selected the correct images for each with very little help. This was also the second day of doing all of her gluing by herself! We're so proud of her gluing skills!
Then it was time for some fun, and we did a large painting with Color Wonder paints that Reagan earned from doing her chores last week. After a lot of hard work we had an O and W snack of mini waffles, and mandarin orange slices. Yummy!
We did a wipe of book page, a regular workbook page, practice writing paper for the two letters, as well as an O and W word chart. We also did an activity where we went through her basket of shoes and matched them into pairs to practice the number 2. This of course turned into a practice putting on shoes session. :D
The worksheet. Reagan did an excellent job connecting the things with lines. She's been able to draw a somewhat straight line for awhile now, but has never had the control to do this sort of thing. Her abilities to apply these skills now that she's been asked to are just amazing. Not only is she connecting with lines like this, she can also circle objects reasonably well!
For the chart she wrote each of the letters up top, next to ones that I had written, and selected the correct images for each with very little help. This was also the second day of doing all of her gluing by herself! We're so proud of her gluing skills!
Then it was time for some fun, and we did a large painting with Color Wonder paints that Reagan earned from doing her chores last week. After a lot of hard work we had an O and W snack of mini waffles, and mandarin orange slices. Yummy!
The Letter B
This is the story Reagan just told me about making banana bread as part of our learning yesterday.
"I made eggs, and a little bit of flour on top. Reagan eat the pie up, and Reagan goed outside. Bana bread. I make sugar on it. I sprinkled on it. Before Reagan make it, use stirring. I did stirring! YAY! I did stirring with the spoon. I did that!"
And here's a picture of her "B" word collage.
We practiced "B" sounds, made a list of "B" words, did a couple of work sheets, and baked banana bread!
"I made eggs, and a little bit of flour on top. Reagan eat the pie up, and Reagan goed outside. Bana bread. I make sugar on it. I sprinkled on it. Before Reagan make it, use stirring. I did stirring! YAY! I did stirring with the spoon. I did that!"
And here's a picture of her "B" word collage.
We practiced "B" sounds, made a list of "B" words, did a couple of work sheets, and baked banana bread!
And We're Off!
We just started our homeschool work this week and I'm excited to record it and share it with everyone here. Look for updates on how we're progressing, what projects we're doing, and of course, photos!
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